Blattman Chronicles

Our summer has been filled with lots of fun and excitement, and a plethora of meltdowns to boot.  Being pregnant and according to Will, quite crabby has only added fuel to the fire.  I confess I feel the crab snapping at my children. I’m not sure who started what – if it was my crabbiness  instigating the meltdowns or vise-versa, but we are stuck in a spiral and I am sooooo done with it all.  The solution for me was more structure and scheduling.  I enjoy being low-key, letting my kids play and chose the things they want to do, but that me has been suspended for the sake of the household until the end of the summer, in which time the situation will be reevaluated.  I don’t enjoy being the Nazi mom cracking the whip, but sometimes it needs to happen.  Most of the next little while gets to be scheduled.  Yes, we have it down to the minute with piano practice, math, reading, spelling, snack time, chores, games, etc.  So far it has worked like a dream and we have had no fighting.  I can feel the teacher in me sneaking to the surface.  I have repressed her for so long.  Let’s see if it lasts…

Heading toward the movies I ask the kids to see who can see Edward Cinemas first.

Annie:  Mommy, I see the movie fee-ater.

Me:  Good job, Annie.

Hudson:  I see Edward’s Enema too!

Me: It’s cinema… definitely cinema, cinema means movie theater.

In our on going quest for summer entertainment, the kids and I painted, sewed and assembled a make-shift puppet theatre.  That’s right, how many uses can we get out of our dishwasher box before it goes to be with the recycling…permanently?  It already served as a playhouse for about a week and a half.  During this time it under went a washing of sorts, courtesy of the sprinklers.  I know it’s ugly…but it serves it’s purpose and I got to practice a little bit of sewing on something I get to throw away so there is no stressed involved.  I figure one needs to be in the making since Annie is using her doll house as a theatre.  I am not willing to invest in a permanent one unless the kids show interest in this one.  So here is puppet theatre…Take 1.

I quite enjoy sitting on my back porch, curled up under the arbors.  The sweet smell of those pink roses and the soft gurgling of water from the fountain are so soothing.  Looking around at the abundance of greenery, I felt a leaf project coming on for the kids.

We had so much fun today collecting leaf clippings…Hudson being the official cutter, while Annie bobbed along behind him catching his specimens in a little green bowl.  We have quite a plethora.  I think they got at least 30 different types of leaves.  It’s really a shame the magnifying glass broke, but the kids were still very tender with the leaves moving them around and sorting them with tweezers.  The project culminated with cute, little waterfall books full of leaf rubbings.

Fearless – that is the best way to describe Annie.  My little 3 year old has turned out to be quite the little roller coaster fiend.  We thought she would be and today Annie confirmed our thoughts.  Standing in at EXACTLY 40 inches, our little Annie enjoyed Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Tower of Terror.  She had her arms in the air and was hooting and hollering through them all.  I was a little worried about the Tower of Terror, but as we exited our ears were meet with, “Again, again, again!”

When I say exactly, there are no dramatics involved.  She was measured and remeasured at every ride.  As a result, we had to start giving her pep talks before each measuring station because she didn’t like the workers trying to get her to stand up straight so she would slouch and curl up.

You may have gathered that we took a little family trip up to Disneyland for a few days and hallelujah!  We don’t need anymore switch passes.  Everyone is tall enough to ride and my kids love going on ALL of the rides.  Talk about great quality, family time.  We have to enjoy it while it lasts.

The second day we were there found us exploring places we don’t often venture…Toontown, the Tikki Room and the parade.  We rode so many rides we started to become a little overloaded so we backed off a little bit and took everything a bit slower.  Since Annie is big enough now, we didn’t have any built in downtime so we think it fizzled us just a bit.

We even stopped to hug and pose with characters…we NEVER do that!